Consciousness of Guilt

[debbiediablo]

Lebanon, KS 2.png

Lebanon, Kansas.png

Lebanon, Kansas, is the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states excluding Alaska and Hawaii...522 miles SW of where I live. Click images to enlarge.

[Curryong]

Melbourne is 16 hours ahead of Boise, Irina, until summer comes.
The time zones are indeed complex. In Australia, because our population is so small time zones don't matter so much, except for Western Australia.

What you describe is an anomaly or at least a puzzle, isn't it? Who set up these time zones for different parts of the US and when? I take it some of it is historically-based.

[debbiediablo]

Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on November 18, 1883. Prior to that, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock (on a church steeple, for example, or in a jeweler's window).
From www.webexhibits.org

[Curryong]

Thanks for the info and photo, debbie. So it is Kansas that has the honour!

It was the same in the 1840's in Britain when the railways came, then Greenwich Mean Time was established! Bakers windows had clocks and pub clocks were always handy. Local mayors and corporations didn't want their 'local time' interfered with and there were a lot of objections about being 'standardised'.

[irina]

I didn't know that about Lebanon, KS. Thanks for posting that, Debbie.

The more I think about it, I think I heard Ontario, Oregon decided to be on the Boise time schedule because of the proximity. This explains why the time zone changes about on the county line. My husband and I used to hunt deer in Malheur County and there are legal shooting times after which one may not shoot. It was always strange that in the next county north, the time was an hour different. I never heard of police making an issue of it but the fine for shooting after hours can be pretty stiff. I never really looked at it on a map before and saw what it meant. Weird.

I was thinking today about time and the Borden case. I was thinking it's almost like we don't have accurate time, no matter who did it. Then I thought deeper and figured that overall we have it as accurate as we need it to be. Then here it is mentioned about the standardisation of time in 1883. That's about 10 years before the murders but is it possible there were some older folks that clung to some other form of time? One thing we know is that NOBODY had wrist watches and lots of clocks and watches were inaccurate.

I'm not going to push this idea but I will say this once, what if Morse for example gave inaccurate time for when he left the home? We know when Andrew was seen downtown more or less. Bridget maybe had no idea of the time till the clock struck 11:00. Lizzie had no reason to know what time it was and her testimony indicates she had no idea of time~or lied. The main difference it would make would be in Abby's time of death. Anyway, like I said I was wondering earlier today, what if nobody really knew what time it was~anything was?

[debbiediablo]

I'm guessing they all were guessing...but their guesstimates were probably + or – 5 minutes. I can wake in the night and know without looking within 15 minutes of actual time, even in the deep dark winter. People who had no cell phones or digital timepieces were more observant about where the sun was in the sky, how long shadows fell, which public clocks were accurate (as a child we all knew the old clock over the back was five minutes fast) so there may have been some discrepancy but perhaps not as much as one might think.

[PossumPie]

We have to be careful putting too much "Psychology" behind why someone hatcheted the head, why women don't like to disfigure, etc. I have a Master's Degree in Psychology, and I must confess that the more I learned the more ridiculous it became. Psyc. isn't a 'hard-science' There are very few 'proofs' behind conjectures. True- more men than women kill themselves with a gun, BUT instead of some Freudian crap about not wanting to disfigure themselves, I tend to believe the more simplistic reason...men like their guns women don't tend to own one or have one around. Freud was an over sexed Victorian who secretly loved his mother too much very few still give credence to his ramblings. A hatchet was used b/c it was lethal. No mention of guns in the Borden house, so the next most lethal way was a knife or a hatchet. I have to laugh at Ripperologists or Bordenites who conjecture deeply about the connection to a butcher because a knife/hatchet was used. You are assigning 21st century ideas into 19th century actions. A knife (or hatchet) was used b/c it was quiet, effective, and everyone had them. Poison would have worked...

The comparison has arisen several times between the Villisca ax murders and the Borden murders. Villisca took place on a very quiet street in the middle of the night. No worries of visitors at 3am. No worries of anyone seeing the killer in the dark. Borden murders occurred on an extremely busy street, in broad daylight, with people coming and going from the house and neighbors houses constantly. Threre was a sexual component to the Villisca crime, not to the Borden crime. The killer risked very little in hanging around in Villisca.

[Curryong]

You may well be correct, Possum, and of course knives and hatchets were to hand in all 19th century homes. It is remarkable though, given that fact, how very few hatchet murders that we know of were committed by females at that period. I can think of only one other in Australia in the 1870's and one in Britain at about the same time, making Lizzie virtually a very rare bird indeed.

Poison was overwhelmingly the weapon of choice of female killers at that time. While it would have been very difficult, considering Abby and Bridget were in charge of the kitchen, for Lizzie to introduce anything into the soup or cocoa, fly papers and rat poison were also staples of the Victorian home (as well as axes/hatchets) and I have to say I am quite intrigued by her choice of weapon.

[PossumPie]

You may well be correct, Possum, and of course knives and hatchets were to hand in all 19th century homes. It is remarkable though, given that fact, how very few hatchet murders that we know of were committed by females at that period. I can think of only one other in Australia in the 1870's and one in Britain at about the same time, making Lizzie virtually a very rare bird indeed.

Poison was overwhelmingly the weapon of choice of female killers at that time. While it would have been very difficult, considering Abby and Bridget were in charge of the kitchen, for Lizzie to introduce anything into the soup or cocoa, fly papers and rat poison were also staples of the Victorian home (as well as axes/hatchets) and I have to say I am quite intrigued by her choice of weapon.

I agree. Poisonings were overwhelmingly the weapon of choice for women...and it PERHAPS was considered even in the Borden case, with eyewitness testimony showing someone identified as Lizzie tried and failed to purchase some. The use of hatchets is one of the things that makes me wonder if Lizzie did it..

[irina]

I love to see someone say "freudian crap". Just what I think. Supposedly he interviewed young women in Vienna and they spoke of incest in their families. Freud tried to express this but there was backlash so he changed it to the fantasy idea. Europe didn't want any part of him but America wasn't so smart.

I thought it was modern criminology that said women didn't like to disfigure faces.

One thing that bothers me about the prussic acid thing is the seal skin coat is mentioned. Lizzie had one or two. How many women in FR had them? If a woman inquired for poison for a closet full of sweaters or wool blankets or something it would be more generic.

A reason to suspect something like a butcher in Jack the Ripper is because such a man would have an excuse to have blood on his clothes and hands. Even if stopped and searched by police he would have been allowed to go. There were also a couple men in the meat industry who were possible suspects based on lunacy or location.